The £1 Tea Towel That My Son Can’t Live Without!

A long, long time ago, back in 2012, I bought a couple of tea towels from Primark. They were £1 each – one was a seaside one and the other was a typography style one with towns and cities making up the shape of the UK and Ireland. I felt they were too cool to use as tea towels, so one became a wall hanging for my baby’s nursery and the other I sewed into a cushion.

Somewhere along the line, this cushion I made for my own bedroom became Tyler’s prized possession, his ‘pillow’. I can trace it back to 2013, when we moved into my mother-in-law’s for a year. My husband, me and Tyler all lived in the bedroom, and Tyler would lay on the bed to watch TV (this is where his love of Peppa Pig began!)

October 2013 – Tyler at 17 months in my mother-in-law’s house

So he would lay on this cushion and I didn’t think any more of it. Then we moved into our new home in 2015, and whenever Tyler went to lie down, he’d ask for his pillow – “My pillow!” he would cry! I realised he had got attached to this cushion that I had made.

March 2015 – Tyler at 2 and 10 months in our flat

After a while the cushion was looking more and more battered, as I had to undo the side stitches to take off the cover and wash it (this boy is a sweat head!) The print was geting faded, but on the plus side the fabric felt softer after every wash!

The battered look didn’t put off Tyler, he loved it even more and took it whenever we went for a sleepover at his Granny’ house.

December 2015 – Tyler on his way to Granny’s house

This cushion was now 100% Tyler’s, no one else could sleep on it “My pillow!” he would cry.

So the most heart-warming thing happened when his baby sister was born, and he shared his pillow with Lily! She seemed to like it too.

July 2016 – Tyler with his 2 week old sister

October 2016 – Tyler with Lily at 3 months

Anyway, why am I writing about this cushion now? Well, after soooo long, I finally fixed this battered cushion. I ordered a red zip off Ebay for £1.50, got out my sewing machine, put the zip footer on and fixed the frayed edge. Now the cushion looks good as new! Tyler was sooooo happy when I showed him, pulling the zip up and down.

It was sooooo simple to do, I cannot believe I did not do this YEARS earlier!

This is the back of the cushion, for our Scottish and Northern Ireland fans out there 😉

Tyler loves this part of the cushion best as he can read ‘LONDON’. And as he is learning phonics at school, he is slowly starting to read the other towns – well he calls them ‘train stations’!